Documentary Filmmaking: Tips from the Trenches features new and seasoned filmmakers as they talk about technical, legal, ethical and business issues of documentary film covering everything from finding a story to shooting, editing, and considering legal and ethical issues to tackling financial and distribution challenges. Hear directly from Academy Award winners and nominees, first time filmmakers and 50-year veterans as they offer tips from the trenches of filmmaking in brief interview sequences perfect for the classroom or living room.
Because the DVD was created in an interactive platform, professors can use it for classes on many different levels and because the documentary is inherently interdisciplinary, this can be used in classes beyond communications, to study the social significance of film or how film is an agent for social change. Further this DVD is an educational tool that could be used by seasoned and aspiring filmmakers as a way to foster idea sharing among professionals.
Sections include:
Introduction to Documentary Film (What is documentary? Why Documentary Matters? Why make films? A student of film)
Story (Finding good stories, finding good people, story into film, first person perspective)
Shooting & Editing (Sound & picture, Editing, Screening your rough cut)
Legal issues (Releases & Clearances, Fair Use, Music)
Ethics (General and filmmakers offer specific ethical dilemmas and what they did)
Finances & Distribution (Getting your film made, Getting your film out there)
The booklet for the DVD, available as a downloadable PDF in the Additional Materials section below, contains discussion questions for each section and bios of the filmmakers.
Filmmakers featured:
Richard Berge: The Rape of Europa (2006), Yesterday's Tomorrows (2000), Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle (1999), In Search Of Law And Order (1998). He was production coordinator for Cadillac Desert (1997).
Molly Bingham: Meeting Resistance (2007)
Steven Bognar: All four of Steven Bognar's films premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Steve Connors: Meeting Resistance (2007)
Duncan Copp: Duncan Copp has worked on several award-winning science series including Earth Story, Universe 2001 and Magnetic Flip and Global Dimming, both of which have won prestigious WildScreen awards and In the Shadow of the Moon, which received its world premiere at the Sundance Festival in January 2007 and won the Audience Award.
Marshall Curry: Marshall Curry was the director, producer, director of photography, and editor of the Academy Award-nominated documentary, Street Fight. In 2005 Marshall was selected by Filmmaker Magazine as one of "25 New Faces of Independent Film", and he was awarded the International Documentary Association (IDA) Jacqueline Donnet Filmmaker Award.
Mary M. Dalton: Her documentaries have been screened at various festivals, museums, and galleries.
Peter De Kock: The hands of Che Guevara, (2007)
Nick Dobb: Nick Doob has been director, cinematographer and editor on numerous award-winning films, including four nominated for Oscars, and From Mao to Mozart which won. He has received seven grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures.
David Emanuele: David Emanuele is an editor at NBC Universal News, and edited Meeting Resistance (2007).
Brett Ingram: Brett Ingram�s short documentaries and animated films have won thirty awards collectively, screening at more than 150 festivals and cinema venues internationally. Ingram�s first documentary feature, Monster Road won sixteen awards and screened at more than eighty festivals and cinema venues internationally before premiering on Sundance Channel.
Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine (The Fines premiered their most recent documentary feature War/Dance at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, which won the Best Documentary Director award and was nominated by the Academy for documentary feature in 2008.)
Christie George: Women Make Movies
Sturla Gunnarsson: Emmy, Genie and Gemini Awards, the Prix Italia, the Prix Villes de Cannes and an Oscar nomination. Feature films include the comedy, Rare Birds, starring William Hurt, Andy Jones and Molly Parker and the Bombay epic, Such A Long Journey. Gunnarsson�s documentaries include the cinema verite classic, Final Offer and the post-apartheid love story Gerrie & Louise.
Jon Gustafsson: His latest film is the feature length documentary Wrath of Gods. Some of his other projects include Kanadiana (feature) and The Importance Of Being Icelandic (documentary for CBC Newsworld.
Linda Hattendorf: Edited 7th Street, Brother Born Again, On the Road Home: A Spiritual Journey Guided by Remarkable Women, Jin Shin Jyutsu, and In Debt We Trust
Chris Hegedus: 2002 Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries and the International Documentary Association Award for Distinguished Feature Film for Startup.Com. Other films include Moon Over Broadway and 1994�s The War Room, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and won the National Board of Review�s D.W. Griffith Award.
Cynthia Hill: Her completed work has broadcast nationally on PBS and includes February One, Tobacco Money Feeds My Family and The Guestworker.
Daniel Karslake: Award winning For the Bible Tells Me So
John Knapich: Film editor, writer, and director for twenty years
Jason Kohn: Manda Bala (2007)
Ross McElwee: His body of work includes five feature-length documentaries as well as several shorter films most of them shot in his homeland of the South. His work has played nationally in arthouse theaters and has been broadcast on Cinemax and PBS. McElwee is a visiting filmmaker at Harvard University and has been awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Rex Miller: I�m Walkin': A Journey Through Parchman and SOMAY KU: A Uganda Tennis Story.
Paola Mendoza: Paola Mendoza is a director, producer and actor. Documentaries include Autumn�s Eyes Still Standing a documentary, Without the King.
D A Pennebaker: Widely regarded as one of the pioneers of cinema verite filmmaking. Daybreak Express, Primary, Crisis, Jane, Don�t Look Back and Monterey Pop. In 1977, the filmmaker met and began collaborating with his partner Chris Hegedus and they have produced numerous film together, earning a number of Primetime Emmy awards, the D.W. Griffith Award for Best Documentary of the Year and an Academy Award nomination.
Julia Reichert: Reichert is a two-time Academy Award Nominee for Best Feature Documentary for Seeing Red and Union Maids. These films and two others, Growing Up Female and Methadone - An American Way Of Dealing, all screened nationally in the U.S. on PBS. Reichert wrote, produced and directed the feature film Emma & Elvis (which screened at numerous international film festivals), and produced (with Steven Bognar) The Dream Catcher, a feature film directed by Ed Radtke. The Dream Catcher has screened in over 20 international film festivals, won numerous awards and is seen on the Sundance Channel.
Michael Skolnik: Skolnik has directed a number of documentary films including Without the King, Lockdown USA, Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius �Hook� Mitchell, and La Esquina Caliente.
Cynthia Wade: Academy award winner Wade has directed a number of films including Freeheld, Shelter Dogs and Grist For The Mill. Wade was co-producer/principal cinematographer for the 1998 PBS documentary Taken In: The Lives of America's Foster Children, which was awarded a Columbia-DuPont Award for Excellence in Journalism.